Were Wi-Fi Standards Updated in 2013 or 20 Years Ago?

ROCKVILLE — A few parents at a Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education meeting said they worried that wireless computers and devices with wireless Internet was gradually impeding the health of students.

Read some excerpts from the article.. "David Carpenter is a former county resident and a general physician who served on committees with scientists who performed research about the effects of radio frequency radiation.

He wrote a letter to members of MCPS management in November encouraging them not to have the school system connected to the Internet wirelessly. Carpenter also is the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany.

“It’s appropriate that every child have access to the Internet, but the problem is when it’s wireless access to the Internet, there is exposure to radio frequencies,” said Carpenter.

MCPS spokesperson Derek Turner said MCPS follows guidelines set by the Federal Communications Commission. One of the repeated concerns of parents who testified at the meeting and said the standard was 20 years old.  Turner said the guideline had been updated in 2013. "

So were the guidelines updated in 2013 or 20 years ago? That is the question.  Read more at http://www.thesentinel.com/mont/newsx/local/item/3154-parents-worry-wi-fi-could-harm-students

Towers Just Seem to Stop Once They Get Out of the Poor Communities

From Montgomery County, Maryland:





This report is very similar to what we were seeing in DeKalb, before the contracts were finally cancelled. Now we've figure out even more about why they were going at certain schools and not others. The towers appear to dot the map, quite literally, right around the areas that are now slated for the November ballot where new cities could be formed.

The cell tower fight was only the beginning. savetuckerfromlakesidecity.blogspot.com.

Score 1 for the Kids: Public Schools in Montgomery County, MD, Ban Cell Towers From School Grounds

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 (click headline for full story)

From our friends in Montgomery County, Maryland comes this encouraging story:

On November 21, 2011, a Hearing Examiner for the Montgomery County Board of Appeals issued an Opinion in Case No. S-2818.  On page 40 of that Opinion, at Footnote number 19, we learn that MCPS is no longer placing cell phone/telecommunications towers on elementary school playgrounds. 

This change in MCPS standard operating procedure comes too late for Daly Elementary School (shown below), but benefits the the other 130 elementary school sites that were ripe for the picking by cell tower companies.

Daly Elementary School playground /cell tower compound
Since the Board of Education has never taken a public vote to place a cell tower on any public school site, decisions to let a private company build a cell tower transmission facility on public school land have been made behind closed doors with little or no public notice or input. 

From this Opinion, we now know that cell phone companies are no longer free to make behind closed door deals with MCPS to build cell tower facilities on elementary school playgrounds.
 
Score 1 for the little kids that get to keep their playground space!

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Cell tower compounds have already been installed on playgrounds/fields at the following Montgomery County Public Schools:


Northwood HS - Silver Spring (pictured at right)
Blake HS - Silver Spring
Einstein HS - Silver Spring
Kennedy HS - Silver Spring
Wheaton HS - Silver Spring
Springbrook HS - Silver Spring
Blair HS - Silver Spring
Watkins Mill HS - Gaithersburg
*  Daly Elementary School - Germantown
Magruder HS - Rockville
Tilden Middle School - Rockville
Sherwood HS - Sandy Spring
Woodwards Road ES site - Gaithersburg


*  The Daly ES PTA and community said no to this cell tower and Superintendent Jerry Weast signed the lease and placed the tower on the playground anyway.